A Dissident's Tips for Survival

For China's most outspoken artist and provocateur, the choice each day is 'to be true or to lie'

Ai Weiwei

Dec. 28, 2012 11:53 p.m. ET

The following brief statements are selected from "Weiwei-isms," edited by Larry Warsh and published this month by Princeton University Press. Drawn from the recent writings and interviews of the Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei, the book distills his thinking on individual rights, freedom of expression and his country's future. In April 2011, Mr. Ai was arrested in Beijing and then held for 81 days by the Chinese authorities, on charges of tax evasion. He spent this period in a 12-by-24-foot room, watched at all...